Borstal Boy: Structure and Meaning

Colby Quarterly Volume 21 Issue 4 December Article 4 December 1985 Borstal Boy: Structure and Meaning Richard Brown Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq Recommended Citation Colby Library Quarterly, Volume 21, no.4, December 1985, p.188-197 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. Brown: Borstal Boy: Structure and Meaning Borstal Boy: Structure and Meaning by RICHARD BROWN TILL IN PRINT after over 25 years, Borstal Boy is well on its way to S being regarded as a modern Irish classic, for the glory ofits prose and its narrator's exuberant spirit. Yet following the spate of reviews which greeted its first appearance (1958), Brendan Behan's masterpiece has received little analysis compared with his best-known plays, The Quare Fellow (1956) and The Hostage (1958). Because its narrator is called "Brendan Behan" and its subject is obviously based on the author's im prisonment in English jails from 1939 to 1941, the work has most often been mined for biographical details, even though the author himself as serted it to be a novel rather than an autobiography. 1 Thematic and struc tural questions have gone begging. Several critics have recognized young Brendan's development as the "unmaking of a fanatic," in Steven Mar cus's phrase, without also investigating the wider political and social im plications of his progress. 2 Others have failed to see much thematic point in the relaxed and cheerful Part Three (which narrates Brendan's confine ment in an English borstal institution, Hollesley Bay); 3 similarly, the anti climactic ending has seemed puzzling after the optimistic tone found earlier in the third part. Consequently the novel's long concluding section is widely regarded as further proof of Behan's inability to focus his writings, consistent with the heavy assistance he required from directors in mounting his plays, or the sad tales about preparing his rambling tape recordings for book publication shortly before his death. However, Behan labored on Borstal Boy for over 15 years. He pub lished a short piece, "Borstal Day," as early as the year following his re lease, in June, 1942. From then until the novel's publication, he referred to it sporadically in letters and revised it painstakingly. 4 If the finished work-especially in Part Three-contains slack passages, it is neverthe less Behan's most self-consciously crafted writing. I wish to propose that 1. Ulick O'Connor, Brendan Behan (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970; Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971), p. 144. 2. Steven Marcus, "Tom Brown in Quod," Partisan Review, XXVI, 2 (Spring 1959), 335-44. Colbert Kearney, The Writings ofBrendan Behan (New York: St. Martins, 1977), p. 92, anticipates my argument by noticing that the character's reactions to his environment evolve over the course of the book, though like other critics, Kearney essentially reads the novel as a character study. 3. Ted E. Boyle, Brendan Behan (New York: Twayne, 1969), p. 118. 4. O'Connor, pp. 143-47; Colin Macinnes, "TheWritings ofBrendan Behan," The London Magazine, II, 5 (August 1962), 53-61; Corey Phelps, "Borstal Revisited," I Carb S, II (Winter-Spring 1975), 39-60. 188 Published by Digital Commons @ Colby, 1985 1 Colby Quarterly, Vol. 21, Iss. 4 [1985], Art. 4 RICHARD BROWN 189 its nearly utopian third part and its melancholy, anti-climactic ending are actually well-shaped to conclude a surprisingly mature political argu ment, which is reflected in the process of the narrator's growing up. Before turning to the novel's structure and broader political implica tions, however, it is worth considering why readers have so often failed to mark them. The reason lies both in the enormously vital and attractive personality of the protagonist, a young would-be I.R.A. bomber, and in Behan's strategy for realizing him by immersing us in his point of view. 5 The novel's opening sentences overwhelm us with this narrator's energy, his raucous mimicry, his instinct for focusing on conflict: Friday, in the evening, the landlady shouted up the stairs: "Dh God, oh Jesus, oh Sacred Heart. Boy, there's two gentlemen to see you." 1knew by the screeches of her that these gentlemen were not calling to enquire after my health, or to know if I'd had a good trip. 1grabbed my suitcase, containing Pot. Chlor, Sulph Ac, gelignite, detonators, electrical and ignition, and the rest ofmy Sinn Fein conjuror's out fit, and carried it to the window. Then the gentlemen arrived. A young one, with a blonde, Herrenvolk head and a B.B.C. accent shouted, "1 say, greb him, the bestud." (3)6 Brendan's voice is so compelling that it might easily be regarded as the novel's raison d'etre, despite obvious limitations: its inability to express complicated abstract thoughts or to articulate complex psychological states fully. Indeed, Brendan's narrative focuses very largely on his sheer physical impressions: the food, the penetrating cold, the dash to empty his chamber pot at Walton Prison in Part One, or his delight at working under the sun in Part Three. His generalizations about people, politics or religion- though abundant- are fueled by his enlotions over immediate experiences, and slip by quickly as new feelings succeed them. Even a ma jor climax, such as his first interview with the Catholic priest in Part One, which results in Brendan's excommunication and brings him close to bit ter tears (64-67), floats past on the narrative stream, as a "screw" (prison guard) brings him the comforting news that he's entitled to two library books per week. This fateful interview with the priest will be recalled later at specific points-at Christmas in Walton Prison, during Easter week at Feltham Prison in Part Two, and in religious episodes at the borstal in Part Three. Each time, Brendan insists that his attitude toward the church has been permanently changed by it. But for all its importance, the inci dent does not form a continuous element in his consciousness; long stretches pass when he appears to forget it completely. As Brendan's rela tionship with the church illustrates, then, our immediate experience ofthe novel's structure is as a series of discrete episodes or sequences, which 5. In early drafts Behan seems to have adopted a more adult and knowledgeable tone. Kearney, p. 92, refutes Phelps and Boyle, pp. 103-04, in arguing for the superior characterization made possible by the simpler language of the final version. 6. Page numbers follow the American edition (New York: Knopf, 1959; rpt. Boston: David R. Godine, 1982). https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq/vol21/iss4/4 2 Brown: Borstal Boy: Structure and Meaning 190 COLBY LIBRARY QUARTERLY follow one another in a diary-like, thematically discontinuous order. 7 Because the narrator is not deeply reflective, he seems to register these ex periences as repetitious, rather than as cumulative and progressive. Nevertheless young Brendan does occasionally hint that some process of discovery and enrichment is unfolding in him. Near the end of Part One, he thinks over his new friendships with his English "chinas" (mates) and finds that he "should prefer to be with boys from English cities than with my own countrymen and comrades from Ireland's hills and glens" (118). But typically, he quickly passes on to his next immediate thought, without drawing any conclusions about patriotism or politics from this in sight. The novel's most sweeping declaration that Brendan's character has changed occurs when the sergeant who arrested him at the beginning returns to pronounce, "They've made a fine man ofyou, Brendan," at the end ofPart Three (363); but we are left to decide for ourselves specifically how he has matured, since Brendan responds only by avoiding the issue with characteristic sly humor: "Well, I had to admit, except for my late differences with them, I'd been well looked after." Although Behan's creation of such an ingratiating and yet conceptually limited narrator can hardly be called a "mistake" (his personality is, after all, the novel's chief pleasure), still as most readers have totally identified this narrator with the author, they have erred by concluding that the novel contains no avenue of meaning other than his voice. Hence they have overlooked the book's structure of elaborate narrative parallels and tonal modulations, through which most changes in Brendan's character and the development of Behan's political thought are actually expressed. Behan directs us to perceive these patterns by fairly strong signals: he divides the novel into three conspicuous parts, each describing Brendan's life at a different prison. These parts closely resemble one another in their types of incidents and character relationships, and the topics they address. It is as if Behan writes the same story of Brendan's imprisonment three times, but alters the atmosphere, personalities and the likelihood of continued social conflict or resolution. Thus we are invited to discover Brendan's progress not so much through a gradual evolution from first page to last, but through three sharply distinct stages; and we may infer the novel's positive political values by measuring Brendan's joyous experience of work and social life at Hollesley Bay against his antithetical past, represented by Part One in Walton Prison. The shorter Part Two, describing Brendan's wait at moderate Feltham Prison before being sent on to the borstal, serves as a transition between these extremes.

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